Family drama
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Mary Worth, 2/5/26
“Good lord,” you’re no doubt thinking, “how is it that, more than two weeks after Ian ended his war against Sunny the parrot by pathetically surrendering, this plot is still happening?” Well, it’s to set up a long-term plot point: if Ian refused to love the bird Toby acquired a few weeks earlier just because it shat in his shoes, could she ever trust him again? Somehow, after so many years of marriage, Toby has finally noticed that her husband is an asshole, and sure, maybe it’s over something that he’s actually right about, but he’s on thin ice going forward (until Toby remembers she has neither a job nor any marketable skills).
Judge Parker, 2/5/26
Ann’s triumphant return has, predictably, devolved into wall-of-text family dysfunction, but I am kind of curious why Ann’s dialogue in the second panel makes it seem like she’s trying to de-escalate but the jagged-edged word balloon indicates that she’s yelling. Maybe she’s worried a furious Katherine is about to deliver a potful of hot coffee right to her face? Don’t worry, Ann, that would be exciting, so it definitely won’t happen.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/5/26
Say, just out of curiosity, did, uh, Robin Hood famously have any kind of interesting relationship with the tax assessment and collection apparatus? You know, the kind of dynamic that might provide a punchline of some sort in a strip like this? A better punchline than what we got here, maybe?
62 replies to “Family drama”
JP-My god! She’s angrily pouring that coffee!
MW-Mary completely mishears the entire thing and tells Toby to divorce Ian.
MW-Well let’s see. Toby never bothered to call Ian once and tell him about the parrot.
Poor Mary, faced with an intractable conflict between two of her faves (enabling ridiculous behavior and gassing up terrible men).
Phantom:
“If I’d thrown you out in the opposite way, feet first, Chuma, we could have called this depiction ‘a pane in the *ss!”
JP:
I wonder if the State Fair ever comes to Cavelton; and, if so, whether they have a “Best Frowny Face” contest you can enter, with prizes. Each of these two would be am early favorite.
JP: Smashing the coffee pot into Ann’s face “History of Violence” style is something I hadn’t thought of and, of course, it makes sense considering the circumstances but if Catherine did have it in her to perform such an act Alan would have been on the receiving end a long time ago.
MW: I guess Josh was wrong yesterday – the pie and the salad were both for Mary. Toby’s lunch consists solely of a gin and tonic on an empty stomach (the slice of lemon counts as her calories treat for the day). How else do you think she a) stays so slim and b) come out with ideas like “Should I divorce my husband because my bird ate all his stuff?”
JP: Does everyone in the Parkerverse have the same face? I assume their version of the movie Face/Off was a lot more confusing.
JP:
Clearly, Robert Young needs to stop by with Sanka Brand Decaffeinated Coffee and then come back a few weeks later to see if that improves the mood here.
Judge Parker: This entire family shouting match and the subsequent murder/suicide could have been avoided wth decaf.
Mary Worth, you tricked us! Yesterday, Toby was getting the salad & Mary the pie.
You can’t count on anything these days.
Mother Goose and Grimm:
“If I’m able to wangle a deduction for you on account of them, that would be a real feather in my cap! So to speak.”
MW – You’ve done it now, Mary. By siding with Ian, Toby has activated her huge, misshapen left arm to destroy you.
MW: Now look here, Josh, we didn’t suffer through weeks of “I’LL REPORT YOU TO SCHOOL MANAGEMENT” for you to forget that Toby has a job playing ultimate Frisbee and teaching students to draw anime portraits at Santa Royale Community College.
Mary Worth Mashups: How about a few missing final panels? Any you like?
Mary Worth:
“Would you have given that up for a new pet?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Probably. You know, comme ci, comme ca.”
Pluggers: From the looks of him, pluggers are constantly finishing off jars of peanut butter to get the high of the “first spoonful.”
Six Chix: I don’t understand. I don’t think I want to understand.
MW Does Mary even know that Ian was dealing with poop and destruction? That kind of seems important context to giving advice here. Oh, who am I kidding – Mary knew Toby hadn’t told Ian about Sunny before he came back and didn’t blink at that. She’s moved beyond advice-giving and just sits back and watches now that she’s set up Charterstone for her own amusement.
Phantom Who knew that building codes in Ivory Lana included “windows made of sugar” for all of your don’t-slice-your-opponent-to-ribbons defenestration needs?
GA: Old and busted: “‘Baroque’ is ‘broke’! Ha ha ha!” Repeat for weeks.
New Hotness: “Acronyms are hard and confusing! Why, back in my day, we had Radar and Scuba and no need for acronyms!”
JP: Yep, in P2 Ann’s word balloon should be smooth, to indicate that her dialog is inspired by a desire to tone things down, and Katherine’s word balloon should be jagged, to indicate that her dialog is inspired by a 90-proof pot of coffee.
Luann: Is the joke that Luann doesn’t try to inflate every lame job she’s had? Is the joke that Les DOES inflate every lame job he’s had? Is the joke that Tara had a job that doesn’t need to be inflated? Is the joke that Fogarty is collecting basic information for a lesson, and none of them should be trying to impress her with inflated job titles? Is the joke that Fogarty herself doesn’t know this? Is the joke that Fogarty gives them this awful, outdated advice? Is the joke that Luann’s generation was raised by social media, and overhyping themselves is just day-to-day social interaction for them? Is the joke that Luann is so far behind her peers that she doesn’t even know that? Is the joke that Luann’s answer is actually correct, but for the wrong reasons?
I think it’s a lore joke. Remember last summer, when Tara was trying to get Luann to work at a summer camp, but it never materialized? That’s where Tara became an archery coach. Lesson #1 of Career Paths class: if you want a career, you have to, you know, try to get one.
MG&G: Well, I suppose that whole “giving to the poor” thing counts as a charitable donation.
Frazz : “Caufield is testing MY PATIENCE with his mind-bogglingly idiotic comments.”
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Mary Worth : Toby doesn’t care and has already forgotten that Sunny actually destroyed several of Ian’s prized possessions, and that was what he was angry about (being repeatedly called a “Pompous Axx” and then laughed at exasperated him).
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Mother Goose and Grimm : This joke would work better if the tax collector had been turned into a pincushion from Robin’s arrows, while the Merry Men surrounded and loomed over him.
Or is that too graphic and edgy for the comics’ page?
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Safe Havens : …Is Dee talking about wearing the corpse of one of her kind as a scarf!?
(Seriously, furry comics should probably not have the characters talking about wearing fur, even in this “well, instead of fur, we are wearing FABRIC made out of VEGETAL SOURCES” context)
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Slylock Fox : EXTRA DIFFERENCE : In the panel on the right, the mermaid leads a double-life as a mild-mannered, timid girl of this sleepy harbor town. In the panel on the left, the mermaid is an eldritch abomination that eats the human flesh of the unfortunate fishermen of this spooky village.
Both would bang Lucky Eddie if they ever met himDT: The plotting has gone over the cliff. Dick’s old partner and presumably old friend is the big bad? And the breakthrough clue is a random dog nip at the wrist causing the watch to fall off? It is on you Dick – what a cheap watch strap! So basically DT is extraneous to the main plot.
Czar was holed up in the hotel, so the Mirror encounter with DT didn’t really mean anything.
The assassination, and botched escape all occurred without DT. DT’s only role is to recognize the wrist watch.
GT: Ok – a reset look – I thought Gil was taller. The coaches are younger and leaner. Look how they all look better without those bags and jowls!
Hi and Lois: Actually you sue about anything. It may not have any merit and get tossed out of court risking a counter suit for vexious litigation, but if you have the money go for it.
JP: Ann realizes she has overplayed her hand. She thought the family card was a free pass but she’s blown it now by not reading the situation probably. Now she is cowed by the counter attack and is all jazz hands and about to suggest Katherine switch to decaf coffee.
Actually this scene is a good subtle point and explains how her many many criminal schemes failed! She would blow the set up or failed to close the deal or somehow just sour things. Meanwhile Charlotte has finished her hot chocolate, meal and has washed up the dishes and plates. She is now quietly reading the mail left on the kitchen table. “hmmmmm, rebuilding the stables is expensive, and feeding the horsies takes a lot of money as well…”
Luann: OK – so the strip is drifting aimless like Luann, we get it.
Mary Worth: Will Toby actually answer this question? If pressed, who will she choose, Pompous Axx Ian or Squawky Sunny?
Phantom: Judge, jury, and defenestrator! The Phantom clearly has been working out. It takes a lot of strength to throw someone through a modern tempered glass window, and horizontal blinds. Or did the striped shorted one, have his doggie hold General Chum at bay while he carefully raised the blinds?
RMMD:
Terry’s wife Erika posted on his Facebook account yesterday that he had gotten out of ICU sooner than expected and that he was continuing on his road to recovery. Great news.
Phantom: Very forward thinking of General Chuma to install candy glass windows, just in case a purple-suited colonizer decided to show up and shove his face into one before hurling him through it.
“How could Ian have been so against Sunny?!?”
“Well, Sunny destroyed his awards, his mementos, his shoes, insulted him endlessly, and you never asked him before bringing Sunny indy your house.”
“OK, but apart from that?”
CS: This is so stupid it genuinely pisses me off. No, Jeff, you do not lose your precious Marshall tickets if you don’t have your phone in your hand. You needed your phone in your hand to even get to this point, because you would have had to enter a code at some point, not answer Tuesday’s equally stupid, equally wrong CAPTCHA joke. And they typically give you 10 minutes to do even that! You don’t have to retrieve virtual tickets instantly; they’re accessible any time after you pay for them. Which you must have done, if you’re being asked to collect them. Which means your transaction is already complete. Which means Panel 3 is a lie. And you’re sure as hell not going to miss out on good seats to Marshall Crenshaw, whatever you do.
If I wanted to see old, angry, bitter imbeciles confounded by day-to-day technology, while boring me to death with their tedious nostalgia, I’d read Pluggers, you hack.
Besides, since when does anyone in this universe use the phone or the computer for anything? Next week in Crankshaft could easily be Mason Jarre and seventh-trimester Cindy Summers driving in from Los Angeles to collect the $46 their movie theater earned last week. So they can immediately spend it at Montoni’s.
Mother Goose and Grimm: I shot the Sheriff, but I didn’t kill no IRS agent — Congress took care of that for me.
@Banana Jr. 6000: “Remember last summer, when Tara was trying to get Luann to work at a summer camp, but it never materialized? That’s where Tara became an archery coach.”
Maybe this whole lame “class” is a setup to go into a flashback so the Evansii can finally use the strips they had to cancel when they coincided with the Texas flood camp tragedy.
Every Robin Hood film needs to spend the first half on an origin story, and the one in Mother Goose and Grimm seems as good as any.
Judge Parker: “Frankly, what we don’t need right now is you. What we do need is some Irish for this coffee. Pass me that bottle of Jameson, your father is very particular.”
MW: I really hope that the next three days worth of panels are just awkward silence as they chew. Finally, on the last panel of the Sunday strip, Mary simply says “Ok, then…”
JP: Hey, hey! There no need for jazz hands!
@Banana Jr. 6000:
Besides, since when does anyone in this universe use the phone or the computer for anything?
Crankshaft buys thousands of dollars worth of Bean’s End crap every
dayyear, and he does it by computer.The biggest hiccup HE’s ever had was that time he accidentally paid the invoice number instead of the amount charged (“thank goodness it was early in the year before the invoice numbers got in the eight digits; instead, I paid 7493 $ instead of 3599 $!”)
…Crankshaft is better at using a computer to pay for stuff than his son-in-law, despite being in his 90s (and also an idiot).
@The Quiet Man: Interesting theory. It’s taking way too long to get started, though. It’d be much easier to simply have the story happen this summer instead of last.
Mother Goose and Grimm-“We’re straight just merry.”
Mary Worth: Of all the possible lame dialogue, this is the lamest. But it is much improved if you imagine it being delivered by the Intelligent Life characters, and given the depiction of Mary’s head in panel two, you don’t need much imagination for that.
MW-Wilbur turned into a massive depressed wreck over a dead fish I’m pretty sure Toby would have divorced Ian over a parrot.
@Baja Gaijin: Definitely #1,
MGG – Well, if you can call being bled to death by a doctor who is supposedly treating you a punchline, maybe. But this isn’t Rex Morgan, MD.
@Banana Jr. 6000: There’s a reason a flashback story would start with Ms. Fogarty. One of the running jokes in Luann is that the characters can never escape the tiny social group they exist in, i.e., everybody turns up in everybody else’s storyline. They’re also all awful, but that’s not really a joke, it’s just a fact.
Mary Worth: Now that I think about it, this seems like a brilliant depiction of the “reverse victim-offender status” so favored by abusers and their parrots.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: That’s supposed to be a joke? If so, it’s a really dark one. I think the central theme of the strip is that Luann desperately needs to leave her tiny social group. Staying in it sure as hell isn’t doing her any good.
MW – You’ve been married to a faux elitist pompous windbag for years…. I was going to make some sort of point about commitment, but now the best I can offer is given Ian’s age and general health profile, he can’t last too much longer. Why settle for half his net worth when you could have it all….
JP – This could be a ‘60s ad for Sanka….
MG&G – Sorry…you have to have earned income in order to benefit from charitable contributions. Frankly, your whole operation smacks of some kind of money laundering scam….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Anonymous #32: Good point, and much more concise than what I said. Crankshaft should be even more computer-averse than Jeff, considering he’s 107 years old, and was once illiterate. But now he creates AI-powered gardening tools in his spare time. And Jeff had an office job, so he should have gotten some familiarity with computers over the last 25 years. The Funkyverse is insultingly stupid all the way down.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: By which I meant, “Luann being unable to escape her tiny social group is a joke?” The phrasing came off harsher than I intended. Sorry about that.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Good old DARVOPAG. Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, Parrots Are Great
Blondie: Dagwood is now imagining a well done mailman? At what point does his gluttony lead to institutionalization?
MW: Mary has her smart phone accidentally set to translate.
“You would have ended your long marriage over a new pet?”
The phone blurts out: Are you that much of a shithead?
FG: Hubba-hubba! Queen Hotsy-Totsy has entered the building! Even Ming has wood!
DT: Lizzy is doing a Thel Keane sweater puppies display.
MW: Two weeks? This shit’s been going on for four months!
MW – “But Mary, that’s just it. Maybe my marriage isn’t so happy.” (Slap!) “Toby, look at me. Look deep into my eyes! You are happily married… happily married… happily married…
JP – Do you suppose “Hey, hey, no need to get so worked up” is the same thing Ces says when we rip into his scripting for Judge Parker? Food for thought.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Tonight’s dinner is rice”
“And… what else?”
“Nothing else”
“Maybe he’ll give me more notice next time!”
Robin Hood writing off his arrows is like Al Capone writing off Tommy guns.
Damn it, Ann, Katherine has broken out the red coffee cup. Can’t you take a hint?
MW: Tonight at dinner as Dr Jeff goes on about how pathetic Toby is, Mary thinks to herself:
“How can I be with someone who doesn’t see Toby as I do…an innocent animal who just wants love and care?”
How could Ian be against a destructive animal that you let roam free in the condo, Toby? How? HOW? OH! OH! Damn it, Karen Moy, you almost got me! Oblivious to how their own actions affect other people? Whining to Mary with no self-reflection at all? You’re trying to turn her into a second Wilbur!
Now this is professional meddling, folks. Mary cleverly emphasizes “happily married”. The fishing expedition has begun.
Chix (sic):
Answer: Purrr, Purrrr. Chirp! Chirp! Chirp! VrrrRrr! BZZZZZZZZ. HUMMMM
Question: What is pillow talk for schizophrenics?
FC: Thel holds up PJ gumming a kaiser roll. “Figure it out, Einstein.”
“The obvious play at this point, Toby, is to keep introducing birds into the apartment until Ian up and leaves. Now, I know a guy who can get you budgies by bushel, parrots by the pound, and bulk mynahs.”
“But Mary, I want to keep Ian!”
“What? Really? Oh, then, uh, you’ve been happily married for years, right? Just keep doing that, keep your weight down and put out.”
@Banana Jr. 6000: Easier, yes, but a bigger risk. After all, next summer will probably bring yet more floods, fires, maybe even a famine (this world is overdue for one) that will make it ‘inappropriate’ for the Evansii to run those strips. Better to run them now when the only thing going on is blizzards ‘reducing the surplus population’ on the other side of the continent.
…too much?
JP: Who wants to bet that coffee’s got a bit of Irish in it? Katherine may be more subtle about her drinking than her husband, but there’s no way she deals with this family while sober.
MW: Every so often, Mary hints that Toby may not be an entirely innocent party in this–“Are you sure it’s wise to cancel social engagements so you can watch sitcoms with your bird?” “Would you really leave your husband and only source of support over a pet he didn’t like for fairly understandable reasons?”–but it comes to nothing. Maybe she’s wary of alienating the only other person who will talk to her besides Jeff.
Mary Worth
Perhaps Mary should shut her salad-and-pie hole.
HtH: Before The Little Ice Age started in the 14th century, atypical warmth created a boom in agriculture leading to an obesity epidemic in Northern Europe. It’s always neat to find a Hagar strip with such meticulous care paid to historical accuracy.
Beetle Bailey: I hate to be the one to tell the chaplain, but military bases have non-denominational chapels, not churches. That First Amendment thing means not shoving Christianity down every PFC’s throat.
(Then again, I haven’t been keeping up with the current regime, so this may have changed.)